Personal Update

Not much has changed this week. I’m fine and so are the family. We’re all looking forward to the children going back to school!

WORK IN PROGRESS

Capital Action – The large print run of booklet style paperbacks arrived last week and I found that because of the print run size, they were printed on a different machine to the proofs so the thickness of the paper is thinner. I knew there could be some differences and I actually prefer the final product over the proofs. Despite initial concerns about where I would store the boxes, thankfully the packages were not too large.

I ended up checking the delivered quantity and I noticed that I was 10 units short. As compensation I got a ten percent refund on the total cost. This takes the unit price to around 55p per book.

The production of this novella is now complete, and now to the hard part, making it work for my sales. More on that down the page.

Work is about to get started on the audiobook.

Beginning of the End – I launched this novella at the weekend, publishing it for free to my mailing list and then at 99p/99c on Amazon. The large print run has been ordered following a final read-through which captured a few more proofing issues. The delivery is due Monday and I can then fulfil a handful of orders received through my website and I can send out a few as surprises to previous customers.

There has been no more progress on the audiobook.

From The Dead – There has been minor progress on this and I hope to get the latest read through completed by the end of this coming weekend. That will leave me with another read through before it goes off to evaluation.

New PA Series – The first book is progressing well. I have completed an outline of every scene including the ending and I’m starting back from the beginning to flesh everything out. I estimate if I don’t add too much more in, it’s looking to be about 60,000 words. That’s a lot smaller than I’d intended but it’s still an acceptable size for a novel, especially in the genre and as a series. It also makes sense from a commercial perspective as well. If I added more in then it would end up taking away from the next novels I’m planning in the series.

After The End Audiobook – The review of the audiobook is almost complete. I estimate another week of listening and I should be able to feedback the small number of amendments to the narrators.

Another IN THE END book? I’ve been having a think about a back up plan in case the Agent Carrie Harris series just won’t sell in the quantities I need. I know they’re good books but I haven’t yet found my marketing mojo. I’m thinking about a spin off full-length novel. This is still only a thought at this stage.

SALES AND MARKETING

There’s a lot been going on in this area this week.

Capital Action – Firstly, I was disappointed with the amount of subscribers coming on board with the Facebooks ads and have so far had very little take up of the rest of the novels. The ads were costing me £20 a day, which wasn’t sustainable. I’ve instead created AMS ads for the series to see how those go. At least they only cost me when they get clicked. This is kind of a holding pattern whilst I reconsider the strategy. I’ll possibly define a new target audience for the Facebook ads before trying again.

Beginning of the End – Due to the low subscription rates for Capital Action I decided to go directly to a Facebook ad for the paid book on Kindle. I simply replaced the image of the previously successful ad for IN THE END, updated the blurb and repointed it to the universal link for the novella. So far I’m very pleased with the success and getting an average of 10 downloads a day. I’m now just about breaking even on the series but the plan is just to get as many copies of the novella out there as possible. History has told me not to give this series away as the free books are not valued as much as paid. I also increased the price of IN THE END from 0.99 to 2.99.

This is a long term strategy that I’m going to give a little while before I make any changes. I hope to see an increase in the rest of the series by the end of the month.

I’m also doing some sporadic paid newsletter marketing as well to see if that helps. I’m looking forward to reporting the results.

I have also boosted a few Facebook posts for the signed novellas and managed to grab some physical orders, not only for BOTE but for other books too. It’s something I think I should promote more.

I think that’s about if for me for now. I’ll catch up next week!